This invention relates generally to apparatus for processing poultry gizzards and more particularly to gizzard peeling apparatus for removing of the lining from the gizzard using toothed peeler rolls.
After poultry gizzards are opened and cleaned, it is necessary to remove the lining from the edible portion of the gizzard to produce an edible product. The lining is removed from the edible portion of the gizzard using toothed peeler rolls which have helically extending teeth therearound where the teeth on the two rolls drivingly intermesh to grip the lining on the gizzard therebetween and strip it from the edible portion of the gizzard. Heretofore, these peeler rolls have been made with integral reduced diameter shaft ends thereon around which a bearing is placed to rotatably support the roll. In order to achieve a working hardness in the teeth on these peeler rolls, they are heat treated.
This construction has created problems with the rolls and their use. One of these problems is that the heat treatment process made the shaft ends subject to premature failure where they joined with the toothed section of the roll. Another of these problems is that is is exceedingly difficult to make the shaft ends perfectly aligned with each other about a common axis and to maintain that alignment during heat treatment. When the rolls with nonaligned shaft ends are mounted, the toothed section thereon is rotated about an axis eccentrically of the centerline of the toothed section. Since the rolls are used in pairs with intermeshing teeth, there has been a tendency to bind and increase the stresses at the shaft end/toothed section juncture. This has also made the mounting and adjustment of the peeler rolls difficult to do.